No excuse for Clinton’s flouting of email rules

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No excuse for Clinton’s flouting of email rules

Express-News Editorial Board

Published 12:00 am, Sunday, June 5, 2016

Now we wait for the other shoe to drop in Hillary Clinton’s evolving email scandal.

 

The first shoe, a State Department inspector general report, was brutal in its assessment of Clinton’s willful disregard of email policies. Her use of private email and a private server may, at best, have fostered secrecy, hiding records from the public. At worst, it threatened U.S. security through data hacks and the potential for blackmail. But here’s the kicker: She knew of those risks.

 

The second shoe the public awaits is an FBI investigation into whether Clinton’s email practice was unlawful. With the presidential election in full gear, and Clinton the likely Democratic Party nominee, the FBI’s findings can’t come soon enough.

 

The inspector general’s review covered the practices of five secretaries of state, going all the way back to Madeleine Albright. Clinton wasn’t alone in her use of private email. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell regularly used private email, investigators found. The rules around such practices were very fluid throughout the years, but by the time Clinton became secretary of state, they were fairly established. There is no excuse for her disregard of policy.

 

To that point, there were numerous memos about the proper use of email and handling of electronic documents at the State Department during Clinton’s tenure, which she then ignored. These included using approved secured methods for the handling of sensitive information.

If messages needed to be relayed outside of State’s network, employees were supposed to contact an information specialist for assistance. There is no record Clinton did this.

 

She was also warned about the possibility of private email being hacked for blackmail, but that did not prompt Clinton to change her practices. Along these lines, Clinton’s private server had to be shut down in 2011 due to a likely hack attack — a private server that the State Department would not have approved if she had asked for permission.

 

She also ignored an internal program to archive messages, and staffers shielded her use of private email. Perhaps most damningly, when two IT staffers raised concerns about her private email, their supervisor told them to “never to speak of the Secretary’s personal email system again.”

On the contrary, given the risks, someone at the State Department should have spoken to Clinton about her private server.

When Clinton left the State Department in 2013, she should have surrendered all federal records (she also should have been archiving them appropriately throughout her tenure).

 

But she didn’t until nearly two years had passed, and that was only after pressure from Republicans in Congress. Investigators also discovered that four of Clinton’s immediate staff extensively used personal email.

 

Finally, it’s particularly troubling that Clinton refused to do an interview with the inspector general’s investigators when other secretaries of states did. This only enhances the perception that she is untrustworthy and closed off to the public.

 

All of this reflects incredibly poor judgment, but it does not address the lingering question of whether Clinton’s email practices violated the law. That’s the next shoe to drop. The FBI investigation will answer this question — and the sooner, the better, for voters.

It’s a dark cloud to hang over a presidential election.

 

Source:  http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/editorials/article/No-excuse-for-Clinton-s-flouting-of-email-rules-7962085.php

 

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Clinton Email Scandal: Hillary Could Face A 10-Year Prison Stint If Her Server Was Hacked

Source:  http://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/clinton-e-mail-scandal-hillary-could-face-a-10-year-prison-stint-if-her-server-was-hacked/

 

Hillary Clinton and her supporters have steadfastly maintained that her private email server posed no threat to U.S. security. But that’s not true, as the recent inspector general’s report and comments from a former counterintelligence official show.

It’s shocking that someone could lie so prolifically about something, yet pay no consequences for it. But that perfectly describes Clinton’s situation.

 

In her early March press briefing, she had the following exchange:

Question: “Were you ever … specifically briefed on the security implications of using … your own email server and using your personal address to email with the president?”

Clinton: “I did not email any classified material to anyone on my email. There is no classified material. So I’m certainly well aware of the classification requirement and did not send classified material.”

This is plainly a lie, since the initial investigation by Charles McCullough, the intelligence agencies’ inspector general, found at least 1,000 classified documents on Clinton’s server, with some two dozen of those classified as either Top Secret or SAP. For those who don’t know, SAP is even higher than Top Secret, and involves the most sensitive secrets the nation has.

 

We’ve gone through all the evidence before, and will again before this saga is through. But one aspect has been curiously left unexplored: the likelihood that Hillary’s email was hacked by foreign intelligence, leading to a possible major breach of U.S. security.

 

The Clinton camp aggressively disputes this. As longtime Clinton aide Lanny Davis put it, “There is no evidence that Clinton’s private server was ever successfully hacked … All the dire and dark warnings from partisan Republicans about the secretary of state risking the nation’s security by using a private server are, in fact, all speculation — based on no facts whatsoever.”

 

That’s a classic Clintonian response –smear the opposition, then issue a nondenial denial. Notice that Davis isn’t saying it didn’t happen, just that there’s no evidence — except for the fact that the Romanian hacker called “Guccifer” has already pleaded guilty to hacking Hillary’s server.

 

Still, the FBI hasn’t released the findings of its own investigation yet, so we don’t yet know how extensive the hacking and penetration of Hillary’s server by foreign intelligence was. But John R. Schindler, a former National Security Agency analyst writing at The Oberserver, got an interesting quote from someone he described as a senior U.S. counterintelligence official who is “privy to some of he FBI’s findings.”

 

If what the source says is true, Clinton is in big trouble.

 

“We know (her email server) was hacked numerous times; it’s that simple,” the official said. “If I were Vladimir Putin, I’d fire the head of the SVR (Russia’s foreign intelligence service) if he didn’t get a good look at Hillary’s emails when they were sitting in plain sight online.”

 

What’s funny is that this is the week that Hillary is using to launch herself as the clear superior to Donald Trump when it comes to … wait for it … national security.

 

What’s not so funny is what letting Hillary’s emails be vacuumed up by a potential enemy might mean. Congress is taking the possible breach of security seriously. “Did it affect their actions as it related to, for example, Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Crimea or Eastern Ukraine?” asked Sen. Ron Johnson last weekend. “What about the negotiations with Iran? What about Assad?”

Johnson’s are not mere rhetorical questions, but further avenues for investigation. And yes, contrary to some Democrats’ spin, letting U.S. secrets get into the hands of foreign powers is an indictable offense.

 

Under the Espionage Act it is a felony for a federal official to “knowingly remove classified material without the authority to do so and with the intention of keeping that material at an unauthorized location.” That alone can lead to a one-year prison sentence. If the classified material is then made available to an “unauthorized person,” it can lead to 10 years in prison — 15 if the information identifies a U.S. covert agent.

 

Yet a recent Gallup Poll shows that more than half of Democrats would still support Hillary if she were indicted. Sad to say, that in itself is an indictment of a party that no longer thinks national security is important.

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Way to go, Hitlery...

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